Shameless Self-Promotion

Innovate or die?
Many of you might have already heard that I am moderating a debate at ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., titled “The Ultimate Debate.” For the record, I didn’t give it that name. In fact, I am a even a substitute moderator for the event, doing a good turn for my overbooked and much more unflappable colleague Roy Tennant.

I don’t particularly like superlatives (it comes from reading a lot of press releases)—where does one go from “Ultimate”? Oh well. But I do like this panel and I love the topic, so I hope you will join me and the debaters—Karen Schneider, Joe Janes, and Stephen Abram—as we discuss “Do Libraries Innovate.” For pre-debate rabble-rousing, see the LITA-L list archives!

Is there a vendor in the house?
On Sunday at ALA, Marshall Breeding and I will take to the riser with a group of technologists from some of your favorite vendors. Unlike some other panels, we have asked the CEOs to stay away and send their CTOs, technologists, and product specialists for a more technical discussion about the state of library automation and a look toward the future. The panel is co-hosted by American Libraries and the Exhibits Round Table and will take place on the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage in the Exhibit Hall.

This group is not meant to be exclusive, but was kept to a relatively small number so that it would be a good session. It’s not a vendor bashing, but expect some hard and direct questions! Here’s the panel:

This sounds great – I’m sorry to not be attending ALA. However, I wonder what sort of conversation it might be if the folks from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com were invited….

Cindy

Gloria Sanchezsays:

How come VTLS is not invited? I thought they were bigger than Medialab…

Gloria….size, revenues, good looks, bribes, and persistence played no factor. The main goals of this were:
1) keep the panel small enough to be interesting
2) make the questions not so general as to be mind-numbingly boring
3) make it interesting enough to draw a crowd
4) hope that it is popular enough to happen every year, and thus….
5) make participation on the panel competitive so that everyone wants to be on it.

As I said in the initial message, if we had taken on all requests, and included the broad spectrum, we would have had 12-15 on the panel and maybe that many in the crowd.